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Podcast: Commonwealth Club of California Podcast
Episode: Humanities West Presents Pythagoras to Plato: The Ancient Greek Revolution in Human Thought
Description: Numbers and mathematics were in use long before Pythagoras was born in the mid-sixth century BC, but few if any suspected that beyond practical use these were keys to unlock doorways to vast hidden knowledge. The discovery made by Pythagoras or his earliest followers—that there is pattern and order hidden behind the apparent variety and confusion of nature and that it is possible to understand it through numbers—was one of the most profound and significant discoveries in the history of human thought.   Humanities West highlights this fundamental shift by focusing on that initial jolt of intelle...